


Ash

by SpecsySpecs



Category: StarCraft
Genre: F/F, I'm sorry I'm not very good at writing canon characters, Protoss, Terran, a girl and her box, box - Freeform, for all that I'm emphasizing the box it's not actually much of a character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 13:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8535130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpecsySpecs/pseuds/SpecsySpecs
Summary: A girl and her box accidentally uncover a cute robot girl. Cryptids, science, and other shenanigans ensue!(Warning: I am a busy college student and updates are not gonna be anything resembling consistent. Kudos and comments will be good for motivation and my soul.)





	1. The Cave

Most of the time, these planets were cold. Terraforming could only do so much, and it was usually considered safer to terraform planets on the cold end of the habitable range than the warm end. Inducing a greenhouse effect was easy enough once industry started up. Trying to calm down a runaway greenhouse effect on an already hot planet wasn’t easy at all. Ashley didn’t consider herself lucky that this particular planet was an exception to that rule.  
  
It was a hot, dry planet, one of the ones that had probably never seen a drop of water until terrans showed up. The dust flew into the air with every step, coating everything it touched with an ashy brown layer. Ashley assumed that it had all spontaneously combusted at one point, despite having lacked an atmosphere and any sign of life as far as anyone could tell. There was just something about the way the dust settled on things, or how it crunched under her boots, or maybe it was just the intense dryness of the place that reminded her of an old fire pit. She decided that something had burned here, once. That wasn’t good for the part of her job that made her money, but it was interesting to note. The camera hovering at her left shoulder snapped a picture of the ground. It was always good to have mementos, and the more the better. Besides, some people liked pictures of dirt. As long as they paid for them, she was more than happy to give them all the dirt pictures they wanted.  
  
Naturally, she wasn’t here for the dirt. Really, she’d just been here to refuel and go somewhere more likely to make her money, but she’d never been able to resist a good ghost story. When the boy managing the vesper geysers started running his mouth about mysterious lights in the caves outside of town, and disembodied voices, she’d strapped Zack to her back and set off to explore. Zack was a big hunk of metal, sure, and he wasn’t easy to lug around, but she wouldn’t dream of leaving him back at the ship all alone. He didn’t play nice with others, as her cybernetic additions and countless burn scars attested to.  
  
The boy claimed that the caves were a few hours walk from the settlement. Ashley considered six hours to be a strange definition of a few, but she supposed he hadn’t made the trip himself. They really were bigger than they looked from a distance. The camera snapped a few pictures of the cave mouth, lighting up the inside with the flash. Parts of the cave wall shone back, bright enough to reveal a tunnel but too dimly to light it all the way down. She stepped inside and knocked on on of the patches. It responded with a dull ringing sound. Definitely metal, definitely hollow, and weirdly musical. She knocked on the cave wall around it. That was all a sedimentary rock, one so fragile that her knock kicked up dust and fragments. She checked the other shiny patches too, just in case they sounded different, but they were all about the same. It was curious, metal chunks buried in layers upon layers of ashy dust. She snapped a few more pictures.  
  
There was only one tunnel at this entrance, although she supposed that there were more paths further ahead. The boy had said that it was a cave system, even if she was almost certain that he’d never been in here at this point. She wondered if anyone else had, or if it was one of those things that they just knew about. Surely the metal patches would have gotten someone’s attention, if only because they could be valuable. It might have been some of that Xel’naga nonsense, where everyone just knew in the same way that they knew Zack was a box and not a cube. She hoped not. Investigating Xel’naga nonsense was dangerous; she’d heard of people getting eaten or turned into aliens by some of the structures. Besides, she wasn’t paid to fuss with it herself, and she always felt disappointed when she had to sell her finds to the people who got paid to fuss with that sort of thing. But education cost money, which she didn’t have much to spare. It was just a sad, missed opportunity.  
  
She walked further into the tunnels. Her camera had a flashlight function, but for the sake of the battery, she just used the inconvenient hand-held one. It was harder to do things while holding it, sure, but she could use it to knock marks into the wall when the tunnels split. She didn’t think it would be a good idea to lose her way. The chunks of metal flashed dimly back at her, lighting up the tunnels a bit. It was looking more and more like some sort of alien nonsense had taken place here, and she didn’t like it one bit.  
It was strange how these tunnels looked, she realized. They didn’t appear to have been worked, but it seemed a bit odd that sedimentary rock had formed like that without water or wind. And the planet had had no atmosphere before being terraformed. Of course, there was also the question of how such a fragile sedimentary rock managed to survive being a cave system, when she could break it with a punch…  
  
As if her words had conjured some mythical demon of bad luck, the roof collapsed in front of her face. Ashley screamed. She cursed. She swore vigorously for several minutes, calling upon gods and demons she’d only read about, before realizing that she wasn’t dead. She opened her eyes, embarrassed despite no one being around to hear.  
A twisted chunk of metal hung from the roof of the cave, turning slowly from the piece of scrap still embedded in the rock. It was difficult to tell what, exactly, it was meant to be, only that it was clearly supposed to have been something at one point. Some sort of crystal and metal structure was nestled in the center, the only recognizable part of the entire mess. Ashley gingerly pulled it out of the metal hulk, using her cybernetic hand in case it blew up. It was surprisingly light, cold, and didn’t do much of anything. Typical alien nonsense. It was too big for her pocket, but too small to be shoved in the mesh bag with Zack, so she just carried it. Whatever it was, the scientists were all about weird alien stuff. She snapped pictures of the broken contraption hanging in front of her, and turned around. No sense in going further this way. If this thing wasn’t enough to get her a score, selling the coordinates would be.  
Ashley returned to her ship sometime at planetary dawn, feet aching and eyes blurry from exhaustion. The boy was long gone, hopefully sleeping. She half wanted to find him and tip him for the information, but her low funds and lower energy convinced her not to. She crawled into her ship instead, unstrapping her bag and tossing it into a chair. She had Zack, and now the strange object from the caves. She powered off the hovercam and placed it atop a pile of scrapbooks and datapads, and then placed the alien artifact between that and another unstable pile. She’d try to figure out what it was, but not tonight. She was dead tired.  
  
Stumbling to the cockpit, Ashley clumsily shoved Zack into a makeshift carrier behind the seat and began to fuss with the controls. The ship resentfully groaned to life, blinking lights reminding her that there were things which really were overdue for maintenance by now. Ashley ignored them, and set the ship into liftoff.  
The flames caused by the friction of exiting the atmosphere were dangerously soporific. Ashley wanted to let her eyes close just watching them, but she knew better than to do that. That route led to a fatal crash on the planet’s surface, and no money. So she watched them instead, until they faded to be replaced by stars and her ears popped from the pressure of exiting atmosphere. She entered the coordinates of her next destination, a quiet little space station where she knew she could find some people interested in a bunch of dusty tunnels full of alien wrecks. With any luck, they’d pay her nicely, too.  
  
She flipped through one of her scrapbooks carelessly, her feet up on the console as the ship leapt into warp. There was a picture from Bysgodyn IV, a blurry photo of some flying creature. That had simply turned out to be a native flying mammal that had been getting intoxicated from factory fumes, although it had made for a very interesting legend. Other pictures showed more alien animals, plants, and structures. An odd Xel’naga building here, a flower growing between metal plates there, a curious little grub over there. Ashley considered them part of the story of the planets she had visited, beyond what people had written down officially. A picture told a thousand words, and most planetary reports didn’t break five hundred.  
  
Her eyes closed of their own volition, her head nodding as she clumsily attempted to close the scrapbook. It was too late, and she fell into a deep sleep as the scrapbook slipped out of her lap and onto the floor. It lay there as the peculiar warp scenery passed by, dingy cover juxtaposed with the shiny metal cube nestled into the chair above.


	2. Thalassa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> holy shit I updated
> 
> In which Zack is the cutest box. Best box. I haven't slept in a week I should do that now. Hope you enjoy folks.

Ashley’s eyes fluttered open. It felt like twin suns were drilling into the back of her neck. The warp outside the ship looked like a bright smear, and the inside of the ship was more like an impressionist painting. She sat up, rubbing her eyes one at a time as she looked around. A blurry shape stood in the entrance, made of orange lights and white smudges. She blinked, rubbing her eyes more in an attempt to clear the sleep and exhaustion away. Her attempt failed, the orange and white blur in the entrance looking no more in-focus than it had previously. The shape did not go away, no matter how much she squinted at it, so after a few moments she decided that it was probably not a hallucination. She might not be awake, but whatever was in the doorway definitely existed on some level of consciousness.

  
It was staring at her, she could practically feel the intensity of its gaze. Her sleep-addled brain tried to figure out what it wanted. If she could make out its shape, maybe, but for now it was just a blurry, glowing object. The two brightest lights tilted to the right, along with smudges of dimmer light that might have been decoration and might have been reflection from other lights. The top part of the white blob tilted along with the two brightest lights. Maybe it was a head, or some other sensory part? Eyestalks would usually be farther apart, but maybe her eyes were blurring out the space between.

  
She shook her head, rubbing her eyes again. This was probably not the time to perform complicated analysis of smudges in doorways that may or may not be part of some weird dream. She should probably save that for a time when she was at least vaguely conscious. That thought nearly made her laugh, which turned into a yawn, which turned into trying to stifle said yawn and smacking herself in the face.

  
“Uh…” Clearly, she was not at her most articulate. “If you need, um, to sleep, the bedroom’s down thataways, not here. Bathroom’s the, um, the door that’s not the other doors. If that makes sense. I think that makes sense. Uh, yeah. Food is… Um, food’s somewhere. If you can, uh, even eat that. Yeah. Feel free to stay.”

  
The shape seemed to turn and recede, although Ashley wasn’t quite sure of that. For a moment, she considered trying to wake herself up for real and figuring out what it was and what it wanted. But she was still tired, and she had no idea how it even ended up on her ship in the first place, and it was possible that she’d scare it off if she chased it. It was almost certain that it didn’t belong on her ship, anyways. If it was still there in the morning, she’d figure things out then.

  
It was several hours before she woke up. Her eyes felt like they were covered in some sort of foul crust, and worse could be said for the inside of her mouth. She grumbled something incoherent yet heartfelt, and hauled herself out of the seat. A sudden, burning bloom of pain across her chest sent her toppling back into said seat with a howl. She clawed mindlessly at the old grafts, trying to dig out the pain somehow, or at least distract herself from it. By the time she’d started drawing blood, the burn had receded from a fire to a dull roast. She groaned, let out another incoherent curse, and left the chair more carefully this time.

  
The doctors had replaced her face with metal after the incident which gave her those nasty burns, but they’d just replaced the melted parts of her chest with vat-grown skin. Even if it had matched her actual skin color, it never felt right. And fuck, did it hurt in the mornings.

  
Ashley took a few deep breaths, swiping her hands over her eyes. “Morning, Zack. Sleep well?”

  
The Xel’naga box didn’t answer, naturally. It just lay there on the floor like a cube-shaped black hole, absorbing both the surrounding light and her attention with equal levels of notice. Ashley just smiled and tucked the wayward box under her arm, giving it an affectionate pat.

  
“Glad to hear it, buddy. Always good to know that you had sweet dreams. Neither of us like it when you start glowing and setting shit on fire, do we?” She laughed, gave the box another pat, and headed off to the back to get some food.

  
“Man, I had a weird dream, Zack. Wasn’t you this time, was it? Nah, of course not. Wasn’t you any of the other times either, why would it be you now? You don’t do much, for a weird alien box that bursts into flame. Kinda nice. You’re not complex, like peop-.” Ashley stopped in her tracks.

  
Under normal circumstances, her little ship had four areas. The cockpit, a living area, a small cargo hold, and the engine room. Five areas if one counted the bathroom. The living area, and attached bathroom area, were between the cockpit and the cargo hold, and contained a few chairs, a cheap table, a hammock, a box of cheap rations, and whatever scrapbooks and interesting finds she hadn’t consigned to the cargo hold piled up on said chairs. It was not supposed to contain an alien robot with white paint and glowing orange bits. It definitely was not supposed to contain an alien robot sitting on the hammock, calmly looking through one of her scrapbooks.

  
“Uh.” Ashley stared.

  
The alien robot looked at her with the same calm regard that it had given her earlier, when she’d thought she’d been asleep. _You are quite good at taking photographs._

  
“Uh. Thanks?” Ashley put down Zack carefully, out of reach of any curious aliens. “Uh, you’re a protoss, right?”

  
_That is correct. I am Thalassa, Purifier Templar of the Protoss Empire._

  
“Nice to, um, nice to meet you, Thalassa. I’m Ashley, uh, not of anyone in particular.” Ashley tried, and failed, to smile casually. “No offense, but, um, how did you get on my ship? I don’t think anyone can teleport onto a ship while it’s in warp, not even protoss, unless of course you have something that I don’t know about, but I’m not sure why you would pick-?” She shook her head again, smacking the side of it sharply. “Stop that, Ashley. Sorry. Why are you here, Thalassa?”

  
Thalassa’s eyes narrowed in what Ashley was pretty sure was a frown. _You activated my warp prism… Except you did not. I see._ The purifier regarded the core of machinery Ashley had retrieved from the planet she’d left. _Then it activated itself._

  
“Probably good it did that, since I was planning to sell it.” Thalassa had just confirmed that she, at least, could read minds, and Ashley had never had much of a filter anyways, so being honest wouldn’t hurt here. “Can’t do that now, of course, since you’re here. The Dominion would probably dissect you, no matter what Val-.”

  
Ashley suddenly turned and walked straight back to the cockpit, picking up Zack as she went. The Dominion would probably dissect the purifier, wouldn’t they. The money would be nice- maybe even enough to get proper surgery done! -but no way in hell was she handing over another living being to be vivisected. Ashley promptly brought the ship out of warp, ignoring the complaint of the hull as it stopped dead.

  
“Right, so that’s inhabited, and so’s that…” Muttering to herself, she pored through the coordinates of planets she’d been planning to pay a visit to. “Uh, Miss Purifier ma’am, you don’t happen to know where protoss space is, do you?”


	3. A Simple Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dialogue dialogue dialogue
> 
> lots of talking in this one
> 
> once again sleep deprivation is A Thing yaaaaaaaay

Ashley perched on her hammock, a cup of something which masqueraded as coffee in her left hand. “Okay, I think I’m awake now. Try going over that whole thing again?”

_There is not much to “go over,” but I will reiterate what I said before you claimed that you needed drink stimulants._ Thalassa was probably smiling, Ashley decided. _Purifier soldiers are outfitted with a data web to enhance functionality. This permits us to offload information to other cores. In battle, soldiers have very little need for maps that one would utilize while on a ship, so we offload that information to the cores of the pilots, who do need that information. When I entered the warp prism, the battle I was in had damaged portions of my circuitry which permitted me to access the data web, and I had permanently lost the information which was offloaded. As the warp prism never returned to the rest of the protoss forces, I was not repaired, which means that I still do not have that information, and that I still cannot access the data web. Therefore, I cannot access my internal map of protoss space, because I do not have it._

“You probably could’ve just said that you don’t have it,” Ashley said. 

_Yes, but you would have questioned that, I think._ Thalassa tilted her head. _You seem like the curious sort._

“Guilty as charged.” Ashley considered that information, and tried not to consider the taste of her coffee. “I suppose that means that even if you were right next to someone else’s core, you couldn’t get at their information because you don’t have your web access?”

_That is correct._ Thalassa paused. _You believe that there may be more cores where I came from?_

Ashley made a face. “Well, maybe. But I’d have to know what I was looking for, most of what I saw there looked like scrap, and the whole area wasn’t exactly the most stable place. Oh, and there are the colonists. Protoss did torch Chau Sara and Mar Sara, so you wouldn’t be welcome.”

_And your government might try to “vivisect” me if they caught me?_ Thalassa’s tone was extremely odd, and Ashely didn’t want to try and figure out what it was supposed to be conveying.

“Not my government, but yeah, that would be a thing. Same with the Combine- that one’s my government, but you probably don’t care about that. I couldn’t tell you about the Protectorate, but they might keep you, and I assume you want to get back home.”

Thalassa straightened. _If they would take me back, yes._

“So, we need to find a way to get you back to protoss space, but we don’t have a map and can’t get one.” Ashley shrugged, wincing at the pull on her grafts. “Right. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

_Is that so?_

“Well, kinda. It’s a little complicated. I’ll have to check the map again, but I’ve got a place that might have Xel’naga stuff on it, since the last structure I found had a mural with a starmap that somehow still wasn’t important enough for the xenoarchaeologists to pay up for- and you don’t care about that part.” Ashley took a deep breath, and started again. “Sometimes Xel’naga stuff has starmaps on it, if you look at the carvings. I don’t like leapfrogging from planet to planet because, well, stuff moves, planets change, stars die, so on and so forth. And this place in particular is gonna be a pain to get to. But I’ve heard that protoss tend to like Xel’naga buildings too, right? So if I can get a long enough chain, I find protoss, you get to go home, and it’s all good. I think.”

Thalassa had that odd tone to her “voice” again. _I suppose you could say that protoss have an interest in the Xel’naga. That is a complex plan, but I do not have a simpler or better one. There is no way to get a map of protoss space, then?_

“You folks do not appreciate terrans showing up randomly. Mapping borders to protoss space implies that people don’t get shot dead for going there. So it’s a little difficult.”

_I see._ Thalassa’s disappointment leaked into her “voice” clearly enough that even Ashley could identify it. _That is a shame._

“You could say that.” Ashley looked down at her empty cup. “And I need more coffee. Again.”

Ashley put the cup down and tucked Zack under her arm, using her free hand to brace herself as she got up. She stretched, wincing as the grafts pulled again, and grabbed the cup. The box containing her food, including packets of random cheap coffee, wasn’t exactly far away from the table, but she found it too hard to talk when doing things. Multitasking was okay for somethings, but trying to carry on a conversation was one of those things that required full attention.

There was no sugar in with the food, and nothing that spoiled. She didn’t actually like plain coffee, but anything that tasted halfway decent cost money, which meant that she probably couldn’t afford it. So she mixed a packet of cheap coffee into lukewarm water, and pretended that she didn’t despise the taste of it when she drank it. It was worth it to stay awake.

_Do you really need to have that? The artifact you keep with you._ Thalassa leaned forwards. _Surely it would not vanish if you did not carry it everywhere?_

Ashley grimaced. “Vanish, no. Set himself on fire, maybe. Zack’s a bit temperamental, for a box.”

_…You personified an inanimate object?_ Thalassa leaned away from Ashley this time, her concern almost palpable.

“I’m not crazy unless he starts talking back.” Ashley crossed her arms defensively. “Since he doesn’t do anything like that, I’m just eccentric.”

_I would argue that the distinction is meaningless here, but it is considered unwise to antagonize the pilot._ Thalassa relaxed, or at least stopped leaning away from Ashley. _And I suppose communicating with storage containers is ultimately harmless._

“It’s definitely easier than talking to people.” Ashley drained her cup, before remembering that a person happened to be speaking with her. “Uh, no offense meant. I think I’m gonna get the ship headed to our destination now. Good talk. Bye.”

She gingerly put the cup down, and engaged in a strategic retreat back to the cockpit. She heard Thalassa making some sort of noise as she left, although it was difficult to place whether it was a noise of offense or something else. It was probably better not to dwell on it, Ashley decided. If the protoss was offended, she’d say so at some point, but until then it was just easier to assume she hadn’t been. Boxes were definitely easier than people, Ashley decided. At least boxes didn’t have feelings to hurt, sensibilities to offend, or any sense of humor.

She put Zack back in his carrier, and hopped into the pilot’s seat. She wasn’t actually sure of the coordinates that the Xel’naga starmap had been referring to, but she’d marked a few systems that seemed like good fits. The closest system had a few asteroids with vespene geysers, according to the system probe. That would solve the problem of fuel, at least long enough to get back to an inhabited planet. It also allowed her to go straight there, instead of having to warp to a nearby planet or station to refuel before continuing, which meant that she could avoid the chance of Thalassa being caught and cut open by Dominion scientists. The other three were much further out, and less was known about them. That was good for getting money, but bad for keeping the protoss safe.

Ashley input the first set of coordinates, and kicked the ship back into warp. For the most part, warp travel was actually rather boring. The ship would alert her to hazards before she collided with them, and would automatically plot the short-jumps for the most safe course from her current coordinates to where she was going. Unless disaster struck, she normally got to relax while the ship was going. Having Thalassa on board was going to shake up that routine, assuming that protoss were actually capable of getting bored with the monotony of warp travel. She hoped she had something for Thalassa to do if protoss did get bored. The computer had some games, and she often spent time fussing with the pictures she’d taken and updating scrapbooks, but she’d never heard of protoss doing either of those things, and Thalassa didn’t seem to sleep either.

Ashley sighed, reaching around to the back of the chair and patting Zack. It probably wouldn’t matter. If it did, she’d burn that bridge when she got to it. For now, she was just going to stay focused on getting to their destination, and getting Thalassa back to where she belonged. That was the most important thing right now.


	4. In Which There Are Bees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> full disclosure: this is self-indulgent biology nerdery with a shot of "I've never eaten raw honey and fear bees too much to try"

Most Xel’naga structures were found on dead worlds, former bastions of life that had faded out as quickly as they had flourished. That this planet was brightly, beautifully green was not a promising sign. Even so, it was worth the effort to land, even if it was likely to come to naught. The primary issue was trying to figure out where to land. Often, the structures were readily visible as an abnormally large aggregation of manufactured materials. Metals, crystals, things that simply shouldn’t be on the surface of an uninhabited planet. But while Dominion and Kel-Morian records claimed that this planet was uninhabited, there was a large area that showed signs of processed metals and other evidence of construction.

The ship landed with a graceless thud, shaking Ashley to her bones. Thalassa was probably waiting by the door, itching to leave. The Purifier seemed to have done nothing but meditate after- metaphorically -devouring all of Ashley’s scrapbooks and records. She sighed, making an abortive attempt to pull Zack out from the comfort of the back of the chair before giving up and hugging her knees to her chest instead. Had she made a mistake on her calculations? Or had the original star system lived and died long before she’d ever been born? If it was the latter, there was no chance of ever finding the next part of the chain, and she’d have to start all over again. Really, statistically speaking, it was probably the former, she-.

As it often did, the tape holding the mesh netting to the back of her chair fell away, and Zack dropped to the floor with an impressive clatter. Ashley startled, finding herself on her feet before she realized what had happened. The box sat innocently on the floor, neither glowing nor setting himself on fire. Ashley half-heartedly glared at the box, pretending she wasn’t smiling as she picked him up.

“Someday,” She chided, “I’m going to have a heart attack from you pulling this. And then who’s going to carry you around and show you weird bugs?”

As always, Zack said nothing. And as always, Ashley patted him before hugging him to her chest. The Purifier surely wanted to go home as soon as possible. They had better not keep her waiting. She walked through her ship to the door of the cargo hold, stopping to grab the hovercam. The other entrance was simply too short for Thalassa to exit comfortably from, but that was fine. The cargo hold would do.

The opening doors of the cargo hold framed the Purifier in a wash of red-gold light. Flowering plants dotted the ground, pollen-heavy stamens leaving golden stains as high as her waist and the bottom of her bag. Here and there, the occasional tree rose from the ground, not particularly tall as trees went, but the tallest things in the gently rolling hills. It was a picture perfect moment, and since she had a camera…

Thalassa startled, whirling to look at Ashley. _Did you just take a picture of me?_

“Yes?” She shrugged, nearly bumping the hovercam with her shoulder. “Do you want me to delete it?”

_No, I suppose not._ The Purifier turned her back, heading out onto the planet with a confident stride Ashley almost envied.

Was that offense, or was Thalassa just camera-shy? It was so hard to tell in fellow humans, and Thalassa was an entire protoss. Ashley didn’t dare try to figure it out. Surely it would be a better use of her time to look at the plants around her. The trees, with their yellow fruits, seemed vastly more familiar than other peoples’ emotions anyways.

“Huh,” Ashley wandered over to the tree, reaching up to pull down a low-hanging branch. “Someone’s terraformed here.”

_You recognize the plant, then?_

“Not really. I mean, yes, it’s an alien citrus, but,” Ashley yanked one of the fruits off the branch and started to peel it as she talked, “The whole thing about citrus is that they’re so good at hybridizing with things, they can hybridize with things that aren’t even from the same planet. So you “bomb” a planet with citrus pollen, and then you can usually eat anything the hybrids come up with as fruits. Delicious and effective!”

To make her point, Ashley bit straight into the fruit. And then she screamed. It was usual for alien citrus to be sour, but this was a level she’d never experienced before. It was terrible beyond belief. The intensity of it caused her to double over, dropping her prize and oozing tears and saliva onto the ground. Somehow, she didn’t find herself face-first in the ground, although anything would be better than the assault of flavor she faced here.

_Are you harmed?_ Thalassa’s “voice” radiated concern, and Ashley suddenly realized why she hadn’t fallen to the ground.

“That was a mistake,” Ashley admitted, slowly making an attempt to rise back to her feet. “Strong flavors and I are not friends.”

It occurred to her that the Purifier might not know about taste, but as soon as the thought came to the forefront of her mind, it was banished by a little pink insect darting in front of her nose. Her prior agony forgotten, she reached out, watching as it landed on her finger. Fuzzy? Check. Tiny? Check. Speckled in pollen? Check. Finally, she understood what had happened here.

“Alright, little guy. Take us to your leader!”

_What?_

Ignoring the confused Purifier, Ashley charged forwards, following the insect. This was a lot harder than it should have been. Even though the insect- the bee fly, it was called a bee fly -was a bright pink, it was much tinier than the roommates she expected it to lead her to. To her great fortune, there was an abundance of flowers, and the little pollinators were just as dutiful as their charges. As she clambered up a hill in pursuit of the bee fly, the contraption she expected to see came into view.

“Beehives!”

_What?_ Thalassa had apparently followed her, and when she turned her head to look at the Purifier, was staring at her.

Turning her head quickly, Ashley stared at the metal monolith in the center of the field, wooden boxes scattered all around it, and started to laugh. “Umojans love bees, they put them on every planet they terraform. But not everyone knows how to keep bees, right? So they’ve got that thing there, and they’ve got those little pink bugs that live with the bees, and between the two the beehives do alright without people. That’s why the sensor couldn’t figure out where to go! Because of the bees!”

Without a second thought about the Purifier staring at the scene, Ashley headed down the slope, and into the field. Here and there, alien citrus dotted the field, providing shade to some hives. The hive keeper was her first stop. While it could run almost indefinitely, it was intended to be maintained every few months, and kept records of the last few maintenances. If there were people nearby, this was the machine that would know about it.

Several hours later, and one near kick to the machine, Ashley looked up, surprised to see the Purifier still around. “Five years since last maintenance. At least we won’t have company.”

_Or we will, from whatever sent the colonists away._

“Or we will,” Ashley shrugged, pushing away from the machine. “But there’s one more thing I need to do here.”

_Oh?_

Rummaging around in one of the storage containers attached to the main body, Ashley yanked out an empty hive frame. “There’s free food!”

_…What._

Thalassa’s question ignored, Ashley advanced on the nearest hive. The wooden box, filled with feral bees, had already begun to hum menacingly. When she took a screwdriver to the propolis gluing the top of the hive box to the rest of it, a cloud of furious insects erupted from the entrance. There was a perk to having required extensive surgery due to severe burns, and that was the metal replacements to most of the joints which had been all but melted by the heat. The bees were easily batted away, unable to do any damage to the metal large portions of her arms had been replaced with. That was, until they went for her face. That was less well-defended.

Despite the stings and her occasional shout, she remembered to place the empty frame back in where she had extracted the full frame of honey.With the extracted frame nestled safely in her arm, she turned and fled, the bees following her with a vengeance. Through the hive boxes and up the hills she went, until the bees gave up and dispersed. Carefully, she crept back to the gentle slope overlooking their valley. Satisfied that no bees were lurking to attack her, Ashley began peeling off the raw honeycomb and shoving it in her mouth.

It was a rather nice way to spend a few hours. After the frame was emptied of its delicious holdings, Ashley looked up idly, wondering if Thalassa had followed her or if the Purifier was still around the machinery at the hill. Instead, Thalassa was sitting right there, watching her. Ashley found herself suddenly, excruciatingly aware of the Purifier’s white metal and clean, sleek edges, as well as the contrast to her dark skin that was currently covered in beestings and honey. She looked away from Thalassa, shaking her head slightly. That was a little too much to think about right now. Thalassa was surely thinking about getting home, anyways, not spending more time with a grubby terran like herself.

“We should probably get going.”


End file.
